Regardless of your opinion of the final text, you can't help admiring Aravind Adiga the almost insane ambition of his first novel. To begin with, it's epistolary, a form that hasn't been in style since the turn of the 18th century. Next, the letters are written by a classic "unreliable narrator," summoning immediate comparison's to Nabokov's Pale Fire [and John Lanchester's tragically underrated Debt to Pleasure.] Then, as if that wasn't biting off enough, Mr. Adiga makes his protagonist the poor driver of a rich family, one member of which he ends up killing, invoking quite intentional comparison to Richard Wright's Native Son. Okay, okay, I hear you saying, that's already more than he could possibly chew. But, wait! There's more! Beyond all the formal and stylistic choices, Mr. Adiga apparently intends the book to be an incisive social criticism of modern India's chaotically entrepenuerial culture, a la Dickens or Zola. Got all that?

The resulting book has been widely praised in the West and won the Man Booker prize. But it has been less welcome in India where the author, though a native son himself, is considered something of an outsider these days, his family having emigrated to Australia, where he went to high school, and having then gone off to both Columbia and Oxford for his subsequent education.

When we gather all these various strands together we can begin to see why the novel is ultimately a tad too incoherent for its own good. The letters that make up the chapters of the book are written over the course of seven nights by Balram Halwai, a Bangalore businessman who--for no discernible reason--has decided to relate the story of his rise from poverty to Wen Jiabao, the premier of the People's Republic of China. You'll hardly need reminding that the addressee is the first among equals in a dictatorial regime that oppresses a billion people. Balram's stated identification with such a monster might be said to be less appalling because he's so ignorant about what life in China is actually like, but that leaves us with a choice between a narrator who's a Maoist or a dunce.

Meanwhile, as is generally the case where an unreliable narrator is involved, Balram is a murderer and a psychopath. As Scientific American informs us:

First described systematically by Medical College of Georgia psychiatrist Hervey M. Cleckley in 1941, psychopathy consists of a specific set of personality traits and behaviors. Superficially charming, psychopaths tend to make a good first impression on others and often strike observers as remarkably normal. Yet they are self-centered, dishonest and undependable, and at times they engage in irresponsible behavior for no apparent reason other than the sheer fun of it. Largely devoid of guilt, empathy and love, they have casual and callous interpersonal and romantic relationships. Psychopaths routinely offer excuses for their reckless and often outrageous actions, placing blame on others instead. They rarely learn from their mistakes or benefit from negative feedback, and they have difficulty inhibiting their impulses.

So what are we left with here? A novelist whose personal knowledge of daily life in India we have reason to question, and a narrator who not only would be uninterested in the society around him anyway, but who is either a communist or an imbecile to boot. And yet we're supposed to take seriously the indictment of Indian culture that follows? I don't think so.

Balram is an amusing enough guide that the book is enjoyable for awhile, but such an unpleasant creature under the veneer that he wears thin. The psychopath may fool you initially, but when you figure him out you ought to bail on the relationship. And when tells you that it was all the fault of others that he is what he is, you ought not necessarily believe him. Especially when there are a billion Indians who aren't killing their bosses to get rich quick.

Fittingly enough, there is an alternative reading available to us which reconciles these problems and effectively squares the circle. Just as Pale Fire offers a hilarious send-up of Literary Criticism (see link to review above), so could White Tiger be read as a brilliant parody of the anti-globalization Left. After all, when you put people's words in the mouths of psychopaths, you are suggesting something about the quality of the ideas, are you not?